GUNNAR BIRKERTS, 1925-2017 
Latvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts, designer of the stainless-steel-clad Contemporary Arts Museum that’s stood at the northwest corner of Montrose Blvd. and Bissonnet St. since 1972, passed away yesterday at the age of 92. Birkerts moved to Michigan in 1949 after graduating from architecture school in Germany; he later worked in the office of Eero Saarinen and set up his own architectural practice in Birmingham, a Detroit suburb. The exterior of the CAMH was altered to its current appearance in 1997 after a design by Houston architect Bill Stern. [Chicago Tribune; more here] Photo: CAMH
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Maybe that for-lease sign up in the window at Tila’s Restaurante and Bar on the Shepherd Curve for the last few months worked: The restaurant closed for business on Sunday — after 20 years at the same location. Owner Tila Hidalgo reports on the restaurant’s Facebook page that her business was given 25 days notice to vacate the property at 1111 S. Shepherd Dr. — it will be out of the space entirely by the end of the month.
Now on Wheels
The broker representing the new and prospective owners of the shuttered Macy’s and Dillard’s buildings at Greenspoint Mall gives just a hint of the rancor between the groups who now appear to be negotiating the mall’s future: Maddox Properties’ Jim Maddox tells Bisnow’s Kyle Hagerty that any supposed redevelopment plans hinted at by the investment group led by Chinese developer Feng Gao that now has the mall itself under contract are “full of sh*t.” [Hagerty’s punctuation.] Maddox says he hung up the phone on area Chamber of Commerce prez and mall redevelopment partner Reggie Gray after Gray complained to him that plans in place by the owners of the retired department store buildings would ruin redevelopment plans for the area.
About those plans: Spring Real Estate Investment’s Zulfiqar Karedia, Hagerty reports, is seeking to develop a truck stop on a 4-acre portion of its newly purchased Macy’s property fronting I-45. Maddox says a restaurant distribution business is slated to take over the Dillard’s property in the mall’s southwest corner — after a sale he brokered last week closes in September.
Full of It
The multi-level steel antenna-support tower that’s long stood on top of the window-deficient AT&T building at 3303 Weslayan St. just north of Greenway Plaza was removed by crane over the last week, a reader reports. At least, that’s what appears to be the case from the ground: The Beck Group construction firm received permits for a partial demolition of the building’s cell tower in June. Also permitted by the city that same month: a Beck Group office remodel of the structure, which is referred to in the permit as the AT&T Weslayan Toll Building.
Here’s a view of the now-dismantled tower from a couple of years ago, as it loomed poolside at the neighboring 3333 Weslayan apartments:
Hats Off
- Demolition, Construction To Start Next Week for Farb Homes’ City Place Memorial Park [Multi-Housing News]
- Dallas, Houston Lead in Single-Family Home Starts Nationally, Finds Metrostudy [Realty News Report]
- Apartment List: 56% of Houston Renters Plan To Move To Another Town Versus 64% Nationwide [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Bucks Trend on How Rising Rents Impact Homelessness, Finds Zillow [HBJ ($)]
- Red Circle Ice Cream Now Open at 6838 Ranchester in Chinatown [Houston Chronicle]
- Final Public Hearing for Proposed Heights Development Guidelines To Be Held Sept. 28 [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Center for Houston’s Future’s Brett Perlman on the Strengths, Challenges, and Future of Energy in Houston [The Urban Edge]
- Installation Brings Hundreds of Thousands of Streamers Downtown for Discovery Green, Convention Center Anniversaries [Houston Public Media]
Photo of I-45: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
We found our happy ending for there’s only demolition.
- 83 Windward Cove [HAR]
JOE’S CRAB SHACK IS ALREADY HALF-GONE FROM HOUSTON 
If you’re willing to count Galveston, as of this week the number of Houston-area locations of seafood chain Joe’s Crab Shack is down to 3, cut in half after the abrupt closures of the Gulf Fwy. at Fuqua (pictured), North Fwy. at Airtex, and Pearland (3239 Silverlake Village Dr., near 288) restaurants. Nationwide, more than 25 of the chain’s 112 locations have been shuttered, ahead of a scheduled Thursday bankruptcy hearing for chain owner Ignite Restaurant Group at which a $55 million sale to former owner Landry’s is expected to be approved. (Landry’s sold the chain in 2006 for $192 million, to a private equity firm that later spun out Ignite as a separate entity.) The Joe’s Crab Shack locations in Galveston (at Seawall Blvd. near 35th), Humble (across I-69 from the Deerbrook Mall) and on Hwy. 6 (between the West Oaks Mall and Briar Forest Dr.) are still open. [Consumerist, via HBJ] Photo of Joe’s Crab Shack at 12400 Gulf Fwy.: Camren O.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BLACK HOLES WHERE FREEWAYS INTERSECT 
“Freeway interchange corners like this one seem to be tricky places for anything to last a long time. The long flyover ramps create this weird phenomenon where you have to exit a couple miles back and ride the feeder to that spot. Yet those same ramps make the property very prominently visible to tens of thousands of people each day who pass by overhead in their car. For whatever reason, the properties seem to cycle in and out of use and disuse. The changeover is probably exacerbated by construction freeway construction, widening, and ramp rebuilds.” [Superdave, commenting on The End of the Greenspoint Mall Is Upon Us] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: FROM THE SOIL OF A DEAD MALL, LET A BUNCH OF APARTMENT TOWERS BLOOM 
“Malls that are about to die need to utilize their best asset and that is having large AC filled connector hallways that can hold pretty much any small business such as coffee shops/barber shops/pet supplies/retail obviously. Using the large department store areas like Macy’s/Sears/Dillards/Palais Royal, investors could make 6-8 story apartment/condo towers. Plenty of parking lot space around in case the apartment towers needs to be built wider than what the old department stores have to offer in space. The location at I-45 & North Beltway is great and parking lots will have exits to both feeders. Residents would be able to enjoy not just living in a nice condo lifestyle but also have AC filled hallways with all kinds of small businesses, I could see baby boomers loving this since many of them are early morning mall walkers anyway. It would be a long process, especially getting 4 different towers completed; but since they are all at different corners of the mall, residents will not have the construction headaches that you might assume would come along with it. I think its a better idea than just tearing old malls down.” [mas, commenting on The End of the Greenspoint Mall Is Upon Us] Photo of Greenspoint Mall: Colliers International
The basic structure of a new bridge crossing from one side of the Conrad Sauer Detention Basin to the other in the northward expansion of Memorial City is now in place, this recent photo (above) from reader Marc Longoria shows. The bridge will be part of Mathewson Ln., which developer and property owner MetroNational is extending from Conrad Sauer Dr. eastward over the detention basin and connecting to Gessner Dr., as shown in this recent construction photo:
Memorial City Marches North
- DCT Industrial To Build Industrial Park on 35 Acres Near Port of Houston [HBJ ($)]
- Seventh Area Home2 Suites by Hilton Hotel Opens in Webster, off Bay Area Blvd. [Houston Chronicle]
- Inside Toll Brothers’ New Line of Smaller, Lower Cost Homes Called T Select, Available at the Wildwood at NorthPointe Development in Tomball and Wooded Bend at Woodson’s Reserve in Spring [HBJ ($)]
- Bosscat Kitchen Owners Opening BCK: Kitchen & Cocktail Adventures in Former Glass Wall Space on Studewood in the Heights [Culturemap]
- Developer Texas Central Hiring Fluor Enterprises To Work on Design and Engineering of Houston-to-Dallas High-Speed Train [abc13]
- Podcast: Paradigm Shifts That Have and Could Make Greater Houston a Better Place to Live [Houston Public Media]
- Lawyers Still Trying to Figure Out How to Transfer Control of U.S. 290 Toll Lanes to TxDOT [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Crews Digging Sewer Tunnel Under Post Oak Blvd. by Hand [Click2Houston]
Photo of Gulf Fwy. Telephone Rd. underpass:Â Christine Gerbode
Headlines
A quick break for the bulldozer – we’ll return as soon as technical difficulties with the city’s permit reporting system are resolved.
- 11406 Lago Verde Dr. [HAR]
With the newest location coming to the Pearland Pkwy. pad site shown at the center of the image above in the Centre at Pearland Parkway shopping center just behind the H-E-B fronting Broadway, the density of Chick-fil-A restaurants in an axis stretching from FM 518 in Pearland to I-45 in Webster is fast approaching Texas Medical Center–level concentration, and may soon exceed it. (There are 4 Chick-fil-As in the TMC area, 3 of them conveniently located inside hospitals — though no drive-thrus.)
Less than 2 miles to the west along Broadway from the pictured location (expected to open in January) is the Chick-fil-A at FM 518 and Dixie Farm Rd.; further to the east are the spots in the Baybrook Mall and along the Gulf Fwy. at El Dorado Blvd. Between them, and possibly on the horizon, looms the planned Chick Fil A location at the intersection of FM 518 and Leisure Ln. in Friendswood. The owners of that property withdrew a rezoning application that would have allowed restaurant uses on that site after residents complained before the Friendswood City Council in April that adding the Chick-fil-A would make the city too much like Pearland. But a new rezoning request for the same property is up for consideration with the council this week, and the owners tell the Chronicle‘s Dana Guthrie that Chick-fil-A is still very interested in building a restaurant there.
- East Pearland to get second Chick-fil-A, Friendswood developer still hoping for one [Houston Chronicle/Pearland Journal]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Spectre of Looming East Pearland-ification Invoked in Friendswood Chick-Fil-A Rezoning Fight
Site plan detail, Centre at Pearland Parkway: Stream Retail
FM 518, Chicken Alley
